Change Management by ING Life
Introduction
The emergence of advance technology as well as globalization and the modernization in the global market, have been able to opened up new as well as promising channels not just in the local market but more importantly in the international market. In order to cope with these rapid changes, various industry has been able to consider new strategies as part of their change management approach. Primarily, the main goal of this report is to investigate change process of an industry. Herein, corporation background and its organizational culture, product and market characteristics as well as the operating strategy of the corporation will be discussed and compared with other corporation.
Organizational Assessment
ING Group is a global financial industry which has been established in Netherlands. The corporation is providing intensive range of quality insurance and banking products as well as services. The corporation's extensive portfolio of insurance and banking products consists of medical insurance, individual life and employee-benefits schemes is tailored to meet clients and target markets' demands throughout the various stages of their lives, covering them in every life-situation.
Started in 1991, the ING Group has been renowned for being the first integrated financial service providers in the international market, when Holland's largest insurer, Nationale-Nederlanden specifically, merged with the nation's third-largest bank, NMB PostBank Group.
ING Group is very active in line with the asset management, banking, and insurance in more than 40 nations including Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. With its extensive international market-wide experience and with more than 125,000 employees, the corporation has been able to offer broad range of integrated financial services to over 50 million clients and target markets globally, including individual market, family and group market, institutions and governments, small businesses and large corporations. ING composes a broad spectrum of famous and major business that increasingly serves their customers under the ING Brand. The company is considered to be the 19th leading financial industry in Europe.
ING's mission is to become the number one choice of the clients when it comes to insurance and banking services through the market channels of the target market's demands in markets where ING can establish value.
To sustain the confidence of its clients and target markets, shareholders, employees, and other stakeholders by operating with professionalism and integrity, ING Group attaches dominant significance to upholding its reputation by striving to upkeep five core values which are included in the company mission and vision: integrity, entrepreneurship, professionalism, responsiveness, and teamwork.
ING Life believes that clients and target markets are first on its priority and its Clients and target market Service management is established to meet clients and target markets' demands at the front line.
Organizational Structure of ING Group
The ING Group’s’ organizational structure can be considered as hierarchical as well as vertically integrated. This is hierarchical since the top managements are making the decision and their employees follow orders from the top management. On the other hand,, vertically integrated since they also give their employees the chance for saying their opinion as well as grow professionally.
The strategy of the company considered communication and market campaign to make the company known to other countries. The company strategy focuses delivering financial products as well as services in the way its clients want them delivered with competitive and convenience prices and exemplary service. In doing so, the corporation, has been able to consider changes in their management approach so as to make sure that they are able to meet their objectives.
In line with its competitors, one of the rival company of ING is the Deutsche Bank which is considered as a leading global investment banking industry with over 75,000 staffs in 73 nations. The financial and banking products and services of the company are organized along its divisions which include Private Clients & Asset Management and Corporate & Investment Banking. As compared with ING Group, the organizational structure of the Deutsche Bank I separated into three divisions to improve their profitable functioning as well as operations to extend their competitive output at the major global financial industries and these include the Corporate and Investment Bank, Private Clients and Asset management and Corporate Investments. Accordingly, the changes from being a commercial to becoming an investment bank has helped the company to facilitate sale of investment in terms of banking products by extending expertise relevant with the investment field to its clients. Within only the first 10 years of their introduction, investment banking attributed for nearly three fourths of the total revenues profited by the company.
It can be said that even though both ING Group and Deutsche Bank are providing banking and financial services each are able to consider changes in their management approach to help them become two of the leading corporations in insurance, banking and financial industries.
Change Process for ING GROUP.
Managing change process is basically referred to as the establishment and generation of change in a methodical process. The major objective of managing change process is the presentation of innovative ways as well as systems in the activities of the firms. Organizations normally undergo changes so as to evolve to a higher level of organizational capacities, stability, management and even production.
Business corporations change is part of as well as result of struggles between internal and external driving forces. In addition, managing change process practice is relevant with with endeavouring to manage their competing demands. To realise why and how to change business corporations, it is first essential to realise their structures, management and behaviour. According to Burnes (1996) these systems of ideas are crucial to Managing change process in different aspects.
They provide frameworks of how business corporations should be structured and managed. Then they provide guidelines for judging and prescribing the behaviour and effectiveness of individuals and groups in an business corporations. Hardy and Clegg (1996) perceive that modern business corporations passed by the guild structures and as business corporations grew larger, skills became increasingly fragmented and specialised and positions become more functionally diversified.
It can be said that business corporation’s change is one of the crucial and very important determinants in industries success or failure (Appelbaum et al 1998). Studies have shown that the emphasis of successful business corporations is on clients and target markets and their demands, which consists investing in manners to enhance and develop sales as well as provide exemplary service to clients, and they do not forget that their clients and target markets’ demands underlie their business corporations’ existence. More on that, adapting factors’ crucial to the success of certain missions and the initiation of solutions to problems are common traits of a successful business corporations (Appelbaum et al 1998). Insufficient change initiatives can throw an business corporations into confusion, being stuck in conventional practices that cannot solve or handle the current issues encountered. Thus, the lack of such factors stresses the need for a strategic business corporations change. It is basically a flexible strategic planning process as opposed to a static form of strategic planning.
Part of the change process of ING Group is the ability of the management to consider merging and acquisition. It can be said that acquiring another company constitute to major changes in the management and strategies of the entire system and business approach. After the acquisition, the corporation mission statement of the company have changed and noted to become “The Best Insurance Corporation in Hong Kong” in terms of revenue as well as exemplary service provided to the clients and target markets. Hence, during those years, the corporation has increased its businesses by initiating more quality agents, introducing new business and marketing channels with bank. More on that, the corporation has introduced many state-of-art technologies so as to enhance and develop the operation efficiency which consists workflow system, imaging system implementation, and the others. Due to these new systems presentation, staffs have to be retrained to adopt the new operation flow. But some of them are unwilling to change and employee resistance has been encountered.
With nearly 130,000 employees in more than 40 nations, ING Group has been considered as a global banking and financial corporation active in the field of insurance, banking as well asset management. Collaboration between and among its Business Units is significant for integrating financial services which is the major concern of the corporation’s management in addressing the demands of its diverse target market around the global market. The change process in ING's management structure is organized in a manner to introduce and present cooperation between nations, regions as well as their market segments. Being an international company, financial and banking activities are organized on a global basis
. Other actions and operations are organized through geographical regions under an equal number of Executive Centers. The change process that the corporation acquired through the change process of acquiring Reliastar and Aetna Financial Services is in lieu of organizational goals of the in developing r internationalization and development of the corporation in the competitive global business setting, specifically in countries outside Europe, So as to formulate ideas and strategies to increased financial targets which fit the objectives and reflect the confidence in the prosperous development of the ING Group, the corporation initiated change process in its change process of acquiring Reliastar and Aetna Financial Services. As mentioned by Ewald Kist (2000), Chairman of the Executive Board of ING Group, the change process of acquiring Reliastar and Aetna Financial Services gave ING Group its long-desired top 10 position in the United States life insurance and asset management market. This business approach and move of integrated operations of ING and Aetna made the corporation the leading foreign life insurance in Latin America as well as the second largest in Asia. The integrated assets under management placed the corporation as one of the international markets largest active asset management in accordance with the corporation’s strategic concepts of enhance and developed services to clients, consolidation, and mandatory synergy , integration and operational excellence.
To successfully handle this change process, the business corporations maximized its new distribution channels, specifically direct and the Internet, to deliver life, retirement, reinsurance, annuities, and mutual fund offerings. This will consists of working closely with ING Direct, ING's direct-to-consumer business, which was introduced as part of their change process. Developments were made to maximize the productivity of conventional distribution channels, which include the largest independent broker/dealer network in the US, as well as career and independent insurance agents.
As part of this change process, the business corporation’s structure of ING Group was reorganized into a two-level management scheme with the Group at its head which has the direct management of Insurance Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific, Retail Banking and ING Direct and Wholesale Banking. In this change process, the organizational structure changes in which the management and executive committees were eliminated to pave the way to having a simpler, clear and transparent business operation management, client-oriented and focused and business logic led business decisions, personal accountability as well as empowerment of every personnels as well as for short and direct reporting lines. The corporation capitalized in the integration of their brand and distribution success with that of its efficient as well as effective business corporations goal: increased clients, enhance distribution channels, brand awareness, innovation and creativity of broad product range, reduced in investment costs which exclude ING investment management, abolition of legal entities, IT infrastructure and outsourcing of payroll schemes and the integrated Reliastar, Aetna Insurance Financial Services and ING.
Efficient assessment of promising growth engines to capture the benefits of the Group has also been given priority in such change process. These consist high technology in terms of information technology and internet, which permits for competitive pricing, tangible value propositions for clients and target markets and operational expense to assets. Capital efficiency to generate value for the benefit of the clients and target markets was conceptualized in the initiation of the corporation’s campaign entitled “Volume-to-Value-Change process” (Hubblle, 2004).
The ING Group management and change process leaders have been very specific and focused about the change process that was considered for the success of the ING. The vision of the management or the corporation leaders and other beneficiaries of the profit of the corporation were implemented. Effectiveness counts in every ING and the change process that will exhaust the chances of the corporation should be immediately implemented for the eventual considerations of the profits incurred. The ING Group management and change process leaders, so as to provide satisfaction and greater advantages for the clients and target markets, implemented the strategic business plan in the shortest span of time possible. Since enhance and developed clients and target market satisfaction most of the time result to increased profit in the business, change process for the betterment of the whole corporation was duly implemented.
However, the management should not ignore the fact that the gradual acceptance and adaptation of the corporation’s transformation posted complexities among the personnels and staff whose responsibilities, duties as well as positions in the ING were affected. For those who were threatened by the change process, the transformation was, for them, was considered as immediate and unreasonable. The threats to their career in the corporation could be traced to their competence and performance as quality work force of the company. In this change process, in order to avoid employee resistance, the company has adapted new learning process that inevitably took place within the company, which made the worries of lax personnels to surface. But for the personnels and staff who have the attitude of improving themselves with the change process that were being implemented in the ING, the transformations were faced as a challenge as well as new opportunity for individual and personal evaluation enhance and development.
The ultimate change process in the of acquiring Aetna and Reliastar by ING did not only post challenges to some of their personnels because even the Information Technology Department of the ING Group was also faced with some difficulties. As mentioned by Irene, although the potential benefits of obtaining the proverbial "single clients and target market view" are numerous—including the reduction of costs, enhance and developed cross-selling opportunities, and closer relationship with the clients and target market—the business aspects driving insurers to pursue this approach and move are quite varied. ING's 2000 change process of acquiring ReliaStar and Aetna Financial Services gave the Amsterdam-based Corporation a significant global presence, with 14 million clients and target markets and the third-largest broker/dealer network in the United States which meant many opportunities to cross-sell. Nonetheless, taking advantage of that opportunity required finding a manner to identify clients and target markets and their wants.
On the Information technology department, the company had tremendous redundancy," Heege explained. The technology environment contained more than 2,500 applications on 35 major platforms. The approach and move of consolidation, integration and optimization to progress and enhance and develop 14 contact centers were consolidated down to six and four data centers were reduced to one in the ING business operations (O’Donnell, 2003).
unquestionably, the whole change process leaders of ING Corporation was the champions of the change process since the corporation is at present doing good and efficiently in maintaining the profits they gained from acquiring the Aetna and Reliastar. The market figures as well as statistics of the ING have been continuously growing for the last couple of years since the transformation. The clients and target markets also benefited from the change process since it brought enhancement and developments in the service and relations of the ING with their clients. The efficiency brought by inevitable demands of change process especially in the IT Department of the corporation resulted to increased clients and target market satisfaction and better service of the ING. The other side of the coin is the people who were part of the ING who were not able to adapt and go in harmony with the change process that were initiated by the ING Group management and change process leaders.
The efficiency and achievement of considering quality change process and change agents, structuring new and effective business channels with banks in various parts of the international and global market, utilization of more advanced information technologies for enhance and developed workflow scheme highlights the beneficial and profitable developments incurred by ING in its change process of acquiring Aetna and Reliastar. The innovation dive of the management of the company and change process leaders of the corporation made it experienced the achievement of being able to put into reality the vision of a ING Group. The corporation will not be successful in its endeavor if it not for the contribution and willingness of the personnels to be part of the transformation of the ING Group. The corporation could have faced greater problems in its initiation of ING and ING Group management and change process leaders change process if the personnels became highly contradicting in the proposed transformation.
Impact of the Change process and the Framework of Continuous Improvement
Continuous enhancement and development within ING Group can only be realized if good working relationships between as well as among personnels is experienced by all the members of the corporation. In order to function proficiently and effectively with clients and target markets, providers of banking and financial products as well as service should be aware that success is first elicited inside the ING. In this regard, the management has been able to consider change model to initiate the project and considers resistance of the employees by considering good working relationships
The Framework of Continuous Enhance and development offers a lead on how to manage a business enterprise especially those operating in the international business environment. It highlights the relationship between the tools or resources of a specific ING with the people working in the corporation and the schemes that that the corporation employ in processing their transactions. The concept of culture, communication and commitment is given significance in overall and continuous enhance and development of a business firm. These concepts should be first inculcated and learned by the members of the corporation so as to ensure that the business will run smoothly.
Evaluation
The management of the company, in their goal to enhance and develop aggressive and competitive ING Group, may tire out the potentialities of the entire company for the benefit of the corporation in relation with total work output. Such will also introduce and present the optimistic and encouraging working relationship and good communication channeling among the personnel in the establishment whether between the supervisor and the subordinates or employee to peers and colleagues.
The personnels, on the other hand, should consider and take advantage of the opportunities of developing their skills further as well as enriching their knowledge through the learning and training programs that their corporation invests on. This will ensure their competencies in the rapidly and ever-changing description and scope of their work and may also sustain their personal desire of improving themselves as productive individuals. Minimum stress level could also be expected in the workplace atmosphere.
Change process of ING Group can be considered as beneficial as long as the change process made can really enhance the competitiveness and strengths of the company. It is efficient if and only if, an in-depth investigation as well as assessment of the corporation’s performance has made in the company. And if the study recommends that there is a need for change process, then that is the only time, the company should imposed required change process to be done. Since change process of ING Group management scheme is very critical, the corporation, might faced its biggest downturn f they are not able to consider strategic planning for such change.. It is recommended that any organization, which will undergo some change process, must see to it that the change process are well planned as well as initiated carefully, because these will the basis for the success and/or failure of any ING.
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